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how to fearlessly face the truth

Logically, being our authentic selves should be the easiest thing in the world.

Realistically, it’s one of the hardest. 

And there are many (MANY!) reasons for that—from fear of judgment to the barriers put up by our egos to a lack of self-worth driven by trauma or a false belief system. 

This list goes on … and on. 

For the latest episode of Dear Gabby, I sat down for a Big Talk with my new friend, actress Kerry Washington, to chat about her just-released memoir, Thicker Than Water.

In it, she bravely reveals some of the major personal and family truths that were kept hidden for years (from herself and the public), and how she found the courage to finally own them.

in this episode, you’ll learn:

  • The personal crisis that led Kerry to seek guidance from a higher power
  • Kerry’s revelation about her biological father and the impact it has on her life
  • How to overcome social and peer pressure to speak your truth 
  • How a parent’s trauma can impact their children on an energetic level
  • Why vulnerability and honesty are healing superpowers 

This wasn’t just a Big Talk—it was a HUGE and momentous talk. As Kerry so poignantly shares, facing your truth might not be easy, but it’s necessary for personal growth and to gain a clear vision of who you are.

listen now
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  • Kerry Washington is an Emmy-winning, SAG, and Golden Globe-nominated actor, New York Times bestselling author, director, producer and activist. Washington received widespread recognition for her role as Olivia Pope on ABC’s hit drama Scandal. In 2016, Washington launched her production company, Simpson Street, whose projects include HBO’s Confirmation, Netflix’s American Son, the Emmy-award-winning ABC special Live in Front of a Studio Audience, The Fight, Street You Grew Up On, and Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere, Reasonable Doubt, and most recently, UnPrisoned.
    Washington is a lifelong activist and founder of Influence Change (IC21), an initiative that partners with nonprofits to increase voter turnout. For her efforts, she has been honored as one of TIME magazine’s 2022 Women of the Year. Washington is a member of the founding coalition of the Roybal School, aiming to drive change across the entertainment industry for students from underserved communities.
    In September 2023, Washington released her memoir, Thicker Than Water, earning a spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Thicker Than Water is available wherever books are sold.
disclaimer

This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I am not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from any psychological or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

dear gabby #179 Dec 04, 2023 emotional wellbeing

authentic power: big talk with kerry washington

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The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

GABBY: Hi there, Gabby here. This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I'm not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from a psychological or medical condition, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the show. I am saying it again, people. It is manifesting season. We're coming up on a new year, my friends, and that means I am about to release my 21-day Manifesting Challenge on January 1st. This challenge is a Gabby favorite amongst the thousands and thousands of people who join me every single year.

It is so powerful. It will really, really hook you up and set you up to win and help you turn your greatest desires into your reality. Truly. There's really easy lessons, manifesting practices, super high-frequency meditations, and a beautiful manifesting ritual at the very end.

So if you're someone who wants to take that New Year's resolution and see it all the way through to the end and create a new pattern and repetition of new behavior, then this is for you.

Let's kick off the new year together. Let's supercharge your attracting power. Let's raise your vibration. Let's manifest a life beyond your wildest dreams. Go to deargabby.com/challenge to lock in your spot now. This is going to be epic. So go to deargabby.com/challenge.

Hey there. Welcome to Dear Gabby. I'm your host Gabby Bernstein, and if you landed here, it is absolutely no accident. It means that you're ready to feel good and manifest a life beyond your wildest dreams. Let's get started.

GABBY: Today on the show, I have a truly big talk. It's not just a big talk, it's a huge talk. Are you ready for this? In the studio with me today is someone I've recently befriended, someone who I really have admired from afar for many, many years. Even on the episode, I actually reveal a personal story about how much she has impacted my life.

And we only met for the first time in person in the studio that day, but it was literally like we had been friends for a 100 years. And that is my friend, Kerry Washington. It was as if we were literally reuniting. So beautiful. And we really talked extensively about her new book, her New York Times bestselling book, Thicker Than Water.

It is a deep conversation. It is a candid conversation, and Kerry bravely speaks about some major personal and family truths that she hid for a long time. Truths that we've addressed on the show, stories that we've experienced here in Q&As and revelations I've had in my own life, and Kerry goes there.

She shares her experience with some big stuff. So I'm really thrilled to share this episode with you. She's an extraordinary person and a woman I admire greatly. What I think I admire most about her is her willingness and her bravery and her courage to be authentic and be vulnerable and tell the truth.

So enjoy this episode. Stick around to the end. It is really, really a beautiful conversation.

GABBY: Kerry, Kerry, Kerry, Kerry, Kerry, Kerry, Kerry, Kerry. So when I first started getting into the podcast space, the agents were like, “Really, what people want to hear is almost like listening in on somebody's conversation in a coffee shop.”

KERRY: Like a private conversation in public.

GABBY: That's right. So what's happening for us today is we've been friends for a short period of time, but we're actually meeting in person.

KERRY: Yeah.

GABBY: So this is literally like our coffee shop moment.

KERRY: It is. It's like our, not really a blind date, but it's kind of like our first date.

Like we've been wooing each other virtually, but now we get to really have an in-person love fest.

GABBY: Everybody can listen in on our first date. I love you. I am so grateful to be in your presence.

KERRY: Same.

GABBY: You have been blessing the world in the last month and a half with extreme presence, extreme authenticity, race, vulnerability, just big stuff. And before we get into anything, I just want to extend my friendship pride to you. Because we talked before, and then you. You did it.

KERRY: Yes. Well, we talked literally the day before the tour started because almost like too on the nose. My body, as you know, had this crazy reaction before going out on tour.

And I actually lost my voice before claiming my voice in the world. I was like, this is too on the nose. And I emailed you and or texted you, emailed you, called you, did all the things that signaled you and said, any thoughts, any support, any help? I need everything I can get. I got to go out there. I need my voice. I need my voice.

And you were so incredibly supportive in all the ways, physical, spiritual, emotional, metaphorical.

GABBY: Well, get used to it. That's how I do friendship. And I will continue to be like that with you. I kind of just go so in so hard so fast.

KERRY: I love it. I know. I had people showing up at my door, like, I have a, I have a, yeah, it was amazing.

GABBY: We got you tuned up.

But you need to remember what you said, like, go in big before you go out big.

KERRY: Yes.

GABBY: And so you did. You did that.

And now that you've been out so big, how are you feeling?

KERRY: I think I'm going to have more and more awareness. It's to be able to answer that question as days go by, because this is literally the last day of interviews for the book, for this round of the book, right?

Maybe I'll do more for paperback. I'm sure it's an ongoing conversation, but this is the last scheduled day. I saved the best for last. I think I'm feeling excited. I'm feeling relieved. I'm feeling really grateful. I'm feeling a little bit sad.

GABBY: Oh, what's the sad about?

KERRY: I think the sad is about. The sad is about how wonderful it's been.

It's tied to the gratitude, right? Like it's been so wonderful to be in community with people, to be in conversation with people, to be this kind of open and connected to my true self, making so much room for other people's true selves, to be unmasked and unguarded publicly in such a big way.

It feels like not that that's going to end, but that this sort of event, the eventization of me sharing myself in this new way is coming to an end. It's about the closure.

GABBY: I get that big time.

KERRY: Do you have that with each book?

GABBY: Yes, but this for you specifically, right now, I can see what went down. It's like you. This is your memoir. We're talking about Thicker Than Water. If you've been living under a rock, you don't know what we're talking about.

But we hope you do. Uh, but, but the, the book is so profound. It's a memoir. And it has so much of your authentic, raw truth. And scary things to share. Big, revealing things to share.

As witnessing you, and even just tracking with you on text, you were like, whoa, people have such, such suffering. You know, when you start to go first, right, you go first, they can open up.

But what I witnessed as a friend on the outside was you owning your authentic self. This is a short period of time to claim your authentic self. Yeah. So the sadness is like very, really, I get that.

KERRY: Yeah.

GABBY: Because you're like, wait, this feels really good to be in my authentic truth.

KERRY: Yes. Yeah. And I do. I guess I feel… I do feel like it's not something that's going to disappear. Like now I'm here. Now I'm on the other side of it and I do feel changed.

I feel changed by the process of writing the book and I feel changed by the process of sharing the book publicly, standing behind it, being in conversation with people about it, like embodying the words on the page in the world.

GABBY: Can we unpack that though? Like what was it about writing it that changed you?

KERRY: So, I think that I was forced in writing it to really be with myself, my truth, my past, my reality in a different way than I've ever been before. In the same way that I talk about in the book there being this slight veil between my mother and I, this slight emotional distance, I think I had a similar relationship with myself because that's how love was modeled, right?

That's how presence was modeled, was that it doesn't have to be fully embodied, doesn't have to be fully present. I think I was always searching for that presence but not really finding it.

And with the process of writing the book, I feel like any veil between myself and my consciousness, myself, just my relationship with me became much more clear and whole and true.

GABBY: Giving voice to all these parts of yourself.

KERRY: Yes. Yeah. And, and also really giving voice. Yes, to all these parts of myself, so including the little girl part of myself, the past versions of me, the angry versions of me, the sad versions of me, the hopeful versions of me, that really giving permission for all these versions of who I've been in the past and who I am now to coexist within the pages of the book and within the cells of my body just felt so transformative.

And I'm not running from me.

GABBY: Correct. Once you say it, it has, and it's been spoken, it's been in many ways released and then of course released into many, many, many copies.

KERRY: Yes. Yes.

GABBY: And many more to come. Um, so understandably you would lose your voice before and then you go out and you share it. So being in that experience of expressing these truths and we're talking about big truths, right?

We don't have to bury the lead, you've been talking about it, but like—

KERRY: You know, learning about my paternity, my parents sat me down and shared that my father, my dad is not my biological father. And that's sort of the big reveal that frames the book. And it was a really important and scary one for me to share.

But there are so many other reveals in the book as well.

GABBY: Even your mother's trauma reveals. My favorite story in the book, it's, I don't know why, it's such a, it's such a, it really struck me.

KERRY: I have no idea what you're going to say.

GABBY: You don't?

KERRY: No.

GABBY: Okay. It struck me really, really, really hard. So, and I think it's because I, I had the experience.

I didn't have a stillborn, but I carried a baby until five and a half months. And so, I think that there's something about that long-term pregnancy loss. I will never know what your mother knew, but when you wrote about her knowing intuitively that the baby wasn't there. I felt that the whole time. I felt that the whole pregnancy.

I have never really said that publicly.

KERRY: Because it must have been such a scary thing even to say to yourself, right? Because you don't want to manifest that.

GABBY: For me it was just intuitive. And then there was these like little things, but not even physically. I was only, I was like halfway. I was twenty, 22 weeks, right?

But like she went all the way through. And so there was this shared camaraderie that I already developed with her when you started to tell that story. But then a bit about her husband, her ex-husband, painting these pictures.

Do you want to share about that? I mean, that was big for me too.

KERRY: Yeah. It was really so interesting.

My mother was in this really abusive marriage and she wound up having this stillborn child and it was emotionally abusive mostly, but then he, I discovered, shot a gun toward my mother in the apartment that I grew up in, in my bedroom that I grew up in.

GABBY: Right.

KERRY: It's so hard for me to wrap my head around that pain that my mother was in and yes what you mentioned that he used to he was a painter. And he used to paint as she was trying to cope with the loss in the mourning of the stillbirth he would paint these portraits of pregnant women with empty wombs.

GABBY: That was like, yeah, I was like F you. But I'm happy that you were able to give voice to that story on her behalf. I wonder how she feels about that.

KERRY: I wish she was here right now in this room to ask her.

I will ask her tonight. I think in a lot of ways, I've watched my mom… to watch the change that she's been going through has been really inspiring because she too, I mean our whole family has been shedding our secrets in the revelation of this book.

And for my mother. I see how much lightness it's given her, how much freedom that you, I really see how much more filled with life she is and less held back by these stories, by her past.

GABBY: You've set her free.

KERRY: Yeah.

[AD BREAK]

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KERRY: We're so entwined, the three of us, that to tell this story, which is so complicated because I think it's, it's always easier to write a memoir when the story is only yours. But who has that memoir? Because everybody's in relationship.

GABBY: Totally.

KERRY: But me telling this story is telling the story of our family.

It's my story. It's my life. But because of how I was conceived and how I was raised and how intertwined we are, especially because I'm an only child. I was telling their stories as well.

And so, we've been freeing each other, like as we hold hands and walk through this book being shared with people and these Q and A sessions and this book launch and these podcast interviews.

We are really freeing each other. It's so interesting. My dad called me a couple of weeks ago. Because I don't know, I don't know what was different about that interview, but the interview that I did with Oprah for Super Soul Sunday, he was so moved.

He just, you know, all along the way my dad would say, I don't like it. I don't love it. But I trust you. I trust you. And I sometimes would feel like he was saying, I trust you, almost like a warning to me. Like, I trust you. And also, like, to convince himself, I trust her.

But I realized that in some ways, trust is like love in that it's a verb. That actually the handing over to me, like the giving me the agency to tell our story, even if he didn't feel the trust, it was an act of trust.

And I see now the gift of that trust. The result of that trust is how free, I mean, he felt like listening to that interview, he was like, I felt so honored. I felt so seen. I really get it. I get what people are getting from the book.

GABBY: Yeah. And it's, uh, a common story. I mean, you met our friend Dani Shapiro, our friend, you know.

KERRY: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Thanks to you.

GABBY Oh my goodness. I mean, those reveals.

KERRY: So Dani Shapiro wrote this incredible book called Inheritance. And Dani is the only other person who really has a big book about finding out that you're blind. That you were conceived with the help of a donor. And reading Dani's book was really helpful to me.

That book came out like a few months after my parents told me.

GABBY: Oh wow. What a gift to you!

KERRY: Yes! And my husband heard Dani being interviewed on NPR and sent it to me and I got the book immediately. And I sent it to my mom and I was like, if you read this, you will start to understand even though her journey is so different because she found her donor like 36 hours later.

GABBY: It's a crazy story.

KERRY: Such a crazy story.

GABBY: And if you knew her husband, you'd be like, okay, that makes sense.

KERRY: That tracks. Yeah. I'm dying to meet him. So I, I'm really, really, really grateful to now have Dani in my life, like to know her and to be in relationship with her.

And we met for the first time and it was like. You know, we couldn't be more different on the outside, right? She was raised white and Jewish, and I'm obviously not, and she's a little bit older. But we have such parallel lives.

Like, our inner lives are such mirrors for each other because we had such identical experiences.

GABBY: To grow up not knowing.

KERRY: Yes, to grow up not knowing that you were donor conceived but knowing but knowing but not knowing. Yeah, how that disconnection with our own sense of self, that disconnection with our own sense of intuition, right?

To, to have to disconnect from our intuition in order to stay in relationship with our families, how that impacted us similarly with eating disorders and with sexual abuse and with, you know, just all of it.

GABBY: Yeah. You covered it all. You covered it all in this book. And that was the other thing. It was like, you're not just revealing this one truth, but then there's this next truth and there's this addiction truth and there's this trauma truth. And it's just. It's a lot. I, I understand and I, I, I similarly had the experience I was able to speak to you from that place of knowing when my book Happy Days came out, it was all my trauma story.

KERRY: Yeah.

A bit of a memoir. I was in that same place. I was like freaking out, but knowing, freaking out, but knowing that I was being carried on the other side.

KERRY: Yes, yes, yes.

GABBY: And I don't think that God gives us anything that we can't handle.

KERRY: I really believe that.

GABBY: And it was time for you.

KERRY: Yeah, it was. It's funny because my friend Eva Longoria was like, why would you write a memoir?

Why would you do this? Why? She said, though, when she started reading it, when she heard when it was announced, she was like, I don't understand. What are you doing? Are you crazy? She said when she got to the end of it, she was like, oh, I get it. You had no choice. Like this stuff was, it had to come out for you to feel like you were living your life.

GABBY: It's also like a next level of service. Like you've, you're a woman who's lived in the service of others. You've lived in this very, very vocal, authentic way. Speaking on behalf of others, but this was like your service speaking on behalf of yourself in the service of others.

KERRY: It's funny I've never said this before but I think as you were just saying that I think one of the reasons why I felt like I had to write it is it almost felt like an amends to the people who have held me up or held my family up in some spirit of perfection or idealness, right?

Like, all these people who kind of were looking up to me or looking up to our family. And I felt like when I got this truth, I owed an amends, like a corrective storytelling to people to say, I want you to know the truth of it.

I don't want you to think that good comes easy. I want you to know that yes like there are really beautiful things about our family and there is a lot about myself that I love and celebrate. But that doesn't come easy.

And I think I may have made it look easy because my parents made it look easy and they were telling the story that it was easy. And I was perpetuating the story that it was easy because I thought I had to and I wanted to maybe be in the service of that amends to say, I'm sorry if I made it look easy.

I want to be more honest because when you know more, you do better. Whatever that saying is like when you know better, you do better. So I think that's I'm having that thought for the first time. But I think that was part of it was like, I want to be transparent about who I am, because I know that there are people who look up to me and who think that I know what I'm doing.

GABBY: Well, I think about the little girl who was in the talented and gifted program, living in the fancier building in the area that was like, people were struggling. And then you guys were like, we are going to care for our building. I mean, it was ingrained in you as a child, like show our strength, right?

I don't want to put that on you, but that's just the perception of what I heard.

KERRY: Yeah. I think it's a big part of also the dynamic of the black community.

GABBY: 100 percent.

KERRY: You know, you put your best foot forward and you maintain appearances. You're representing the race. Women do it. You know, as women, we have to make sure we work twice as hard.

All that stuff.

GABBY: Right. But at the same time, what a gift to the black community to be able to be like, here's my truth. I'm in this, I've been struggling.

KERRY: And that's been so powerful to have so many women in general, but especially black women who say to me, we act like eating disorders don't happen in communities of color.

We act like sexual abuse does not happen in communities of color. Like we have these secrets and we are afraid to reveal them because we don't want to be judged further. We don't want to be penalized in society, but we're only going to be able to move forward as whole beings if we tell the truth.

GABBY: Yeah.

I'm feeling that right here. And it's like, it's like download of like. So yeah, your people are here. And so there's, there's this like energy coming and it's like, you're the voice, you're the, the sister that is teaching, right? So it's like, they see you as. It's not just the black community, it's women in general, but thinking about the Olivia Pope role and being that major—

KERRY: Yeah, ideal power.

GABBY: Correct, correct.

But being that for the first time in television, right? So all of this is like, and you know this, but it's like this book was that next level of you saying, okay. Yes. I am in many ways like Olivia Pope, but I think you are. Don't take the dream away. But but then also being like and all this.

KERRY: Right and all that. We get to be fully human and superheroes. So she was the superhero version of me.

She was that embodiment of the best, highest, most powerful, most fearless, but that we to be fully human, we get to have our vulnerability too and our history.

GABBY: And she didn't show hers.

KERRY: She didn't. I mean, the one place was in the love story, right? Like that was the one room where she wasn't always the most powerful person as if Fitz was around.

But on this deeper level. I share that Shonda never wanted that character to be a mom because there is this inherent vulnerability in being a mother, especially the mother of a black child.

You don't get to be Olivia Pope, powerful, fearless, without vulnerability when you become a mom. So that was part of why she never, even though I got pregnant, Olivia never was.

GABBY: Yeah. Yeah. Chills. Chills. Yeah. How did it feel to be Olivia when you were pregnant?

KERRY: So weird.

GABBY: Yeah?

KERRY: It was really hard. It really taught me how to grow my toolbox as an actor because I felt like I was violating her, like I was betraying her because she had this idealized body that I had worked so hard for that to fit in the perfect sample size fashion, to walk down the hall in that perfect way.

And in real life, I'm like waddling down the hallway and wider than ever. And so, I really had to figure out how to, yeah, the bigger, the bigger bags, the bigger coats, the boxes.

GABBY: The trench coats.

KERRY: Yes, lamps. Hiding behind lamps. So I had to figure out other ways to access her that were outside of that kind of idealized obsession about her body.

And that, you know, the, her body was such a way in for me, that walk, right? That was how I found her. And I had to figure out how to find that same sense of confidence and power without it being about my body.

That was really interesting. It led me into a deeper connection with her because I couldn't use the tools that I first found her with, but I still had to be her.

[AD BREAK]

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GABBY: Would you be open to just talking a little bit for my audience? This is like self-help crowd. They talk about things. This is what you call these big talks.

KERRY: Yeah. I'm in the crowd so I know who the crowd is.

GABBY: You are the crowd. You're in the crowd. We are in the crowd. The eating disorder.

KERRY: Yeah. Yeah.

GABBY: So, so it's really beautiful that you're acknowledging how you had to be in your body, but not fully in your body.

KERRY: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

GABBY: Is there any message for our listeners who are struggling with any sort of body dysmorphia, anything along the lines that you feel has been really healing for you?

KERRY: I mean, I think one of the most important things that helped me. Just begin a journey of healing was to be able to talk about it. When I was alone with it and afraid to tell people that I was struggling, it just made it so much harder.

So I would say that's the first thing right is to be able to admit it. Not be alone with it; ask for help, be in community.

GABBY: A fellowship.

KERRY: Yeah, be in fellowship with other people who are suffering in similar ways because that for me was the beginning of the way out.

And it was, I mean, really my eating disorder, my relationship with food and with my body was the first thing that truly got me on my knees. It was the first thing that cracked me open to make room for a relationship with some power greater than myself.

GABBY: Same with me addiction.

KERRY: Yeah. Yeah, like until then I really thought it's up to me to fix this. I have to figure out how to fix this. If I work hard enough, if I try hard enough, if I figure it out. And it was the first thing that I was like if this is bigger than me so to fix this I'm gonna need something bigger than me.

GABBY: What's that relationship like in your life now with that higher power?

KERRY: I mean it's, when I'm in a good place, it's the most important relationship in my life. And I try to spend time every morning in some form of prayer and meditation. On an ideal morning, it's like a 15-minute practice.

And sometimes it's more of a three minute practice, but it is really the first place where I can find myself weirdly because it's a relationship with something outside of myself, but it's that relationship is, I think, the purest relationship I'm in 'cause it's the relationship where I'm really not pretending at all.

I would say my marriage is the closest other relationship to that.

GABBY: Beautiful. Nice.

KERRY: But that's, that's, but even in that, I feel like part of why my marriage is that is because we both go to God.

GABBY: Yes. Oh, how gorgeous. I love that so much. So the experience of going to God throughout this journey. Would it just look like a momentary prayer or kind of...

KERRY: On the book journey?

GABBY: Yeah, just in just in through the throughout this journey. Yes uncovering. Yeah.

KERRY: Yeah. What did it look like?

GABBY: Were you relying on it?

KERRY: Yeah. We would do a prayer circle before every Q& A on the tour. I remember in one of my early conversations with you, I, mind blown, we talked about bringing angels with me on this journey and you invited me into the idea that there might be angels and ancestors from my donor side.

GABBY: Yes. Yeah.

KERRY: And that blew my mind because I had never thought about like, you know, I think about the gift of kind of my parental structure growing up that I have these two incredible parents.

I often say I'm looking for my donor, but I'm not looking for a father. Like I have a dad. I love my dad. It's a complicated relationship, but it's beautiful. But I really do want this information about who the donor is. And if it comes with relationship, I'm open to that. I don't want to presume to know what God has in store for me, for us.

Like I'm open, but I'm not needing him to be something to fill a void, which feels like a gift. But when you invited me into the wisdom that having this additional parental figure also meant that I had additional ancestors, additional lineage, maybe additional angels, I was like, Oh my God. I felt so blessed by that idea and excited about.

GABBY: A paternal grandmother.

KERRY: Yeah.

GABBY: Yeah. And it's also trusting that like the way we come into these bodies is a spiritual experience. And so while we might choose one person's body, maybe it was. You know, just giving other people's examples, an embryo from somebody else, right? So, even the people who are surrogates, who are like the facilitator, that's a soul contract with that spirit as well.

KERRY: Even if it's not DNA.

GABBY: Correct. But that, that like, yeah. Even though they're just there to hold that womb.

KERRY: There's so much fluid exchange and spiritual exchange that happens physically in the womb.

GABBY: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, spirit's gonna choose their way in. And a girlfriend of mine who had, she did a donor egg.

We look at her son and we're like, There's nobody else. She did so much IVF to get to that place where she took the donor egg. But it's, no, this is him. Porter's the only one.

KERRY: That's right. He chose you.

GABBY: Correct. And the woman who donated that egg, she was part of that process. And my girlfriend thinks about her often and it's like, she's the gift.

She gave me this. Right? So it's, there's, it's all collaborative.

KERRY: Yeah. It's funny because I was so emotionally broken open by the process of sharing this book, but I kept doing these interviews where I feel like traditionally I was supposed to be crying, but the journalists were crying. Right?

Like Robin Roberts cried. Oprah cried.

GABBY: Robin always cries. Oh, that's so sweet.

KERRY: Yeah, it's true. So I felt like.

GABBY: But no, no, but they were crying with you for sure.

KERRY: But, but I, but yes, good. It's good. It was like I was in a space with people who were available and emotionally ready. But the interview that I did cry was so unexpected because it was my friend James Corden who's, you know, comedian, right?

Like, and I didn't expect for it to be so emotional, that conversation, but he shared with me this beautiful story before we got on stage about some friends of his who used donor sperm to conceive their child.

And at that sperm bank, even though it's all closed information, which is a whole other issue we can talk about, but the donor is allowed to write that child a letter.

And the letter that the donor wrote said something like, “I want you to know I am not your father. I am not your father. What I am is help that there were two people who wanted to meet you and love you so badly, those two people willed you into being, but to get there, they just needed a little bit of help. And that's what I was. I just was a little bit of help for your two parents. And you are theirs.”

GABBY: Yep. Wow.

KERRY: And I love that so much. And he said, he was sharing it with me because he was like, I am worried. I didn't say what I just said to you a moment ago, but he said, I eventually said that to him in the moment, he said, I'm worried because your life is so good.

I know you, I know your husband, I know your kids, I know your parents. You are so whole, your life is so beautiful and I don't want you to find this donor and have them be an asshole or a jerk and then suddenly you feel incomplete.

I don't want your goodness or your sense of peace to be defined by who that donor is, which I thought was such a loving, beautiful, vulnerable offering from him. And it was a great opportunity for me to really check in with myself and say am I giving that figure that much power and I really don't think I am.

You're not. Yeah, when I heard you talking about before that Total alignment with I want to meet him. He's not my father. It's so clean. And your intuition to connect with him, don't question that.

KERRY: Yeah. I think there's stuff to learn. Like you were saying, I 100 percent know what comes from my mother. I 100 percent know what comes from my dad. I want to know what comes from the donor. I feel like it's a new opportunity to discover more about myself, and so much of what this process is, is I am not afraid of the truth, no matter how complicated it is.

I'm not scared of truth anymore. Bring on the complexity. I'm willing to deal with it. I'm willing to swim in it. I'm willing to be uncomfortable. I'm willing to be afraid. I just would rather have my truth.

GABBY: There's this Joan of Arc quote that I always say for myself, but I'm gonna give it to you too, which is.

“I am not afraid, I was born to do this.”

And as I watched you uncover all this and write all this and reveal all this and show up for all of this, it really is the message, it's I am not afraid, I was born to do this.

And back to your carrying a message for your lineage, your biological father's lineage, your mom and dad, and for your brothers and sisters throughout the world, and for me and for all of us who are being touched by it, it is, it's, it's, I am not afraid, I was born to do this.

KERRY: What a gift.

GABBY: I love you.

KERRY: I love you too.

GABBY: I am so thrilled to go deeper with you and it's just such a heart-opening experience for me as we sort of wrap up this conversation which we have to have so many, many, many more.

KERRY: I'm like, what? That felt like five minutes.

GABBY: No, I know because we need to sit and have a slumber party.

KERRY: Yes. Yes.

GABBY: And we need to just sit and just. be and just meditate and channel and connect and just deepen. And I just actually wanted to, I was reminded of something in my meditation yesterday. So Olivia Pope came in as I was sort of meditating randomly, but what it reminded me of, she just came in to tell me to tell you this, that the spirit of Olivia Pope came through.

KERRY: I’m obsessed with that process. Where were you with my seven seasons of doing the show when I needed her to come through?

GABBY: Oh, no, no, she came through just fine. But it was to let you know that when I was going through my darkest moments, when I remembered the trauma that I experienced, so I had similar trauma, some of the trauma that you talk about, some sexual stuff from my childhood.

I remembered it in a dream, you know the story, but it was really extreme for me and so when that memory came back. It sent me into a very, very dark hole because I was back in the physical and emotional and somatic memory of that experience.

Living almost like that child. Yeah. And so in that time, there was this dissociation part of me that was really valuable. I needed it to survive. And so one of the things that I used was Olivia Pope, I would just watch and watch and watch and watch and watch and she was such a presence for me and I didn't really put all that together and when we first connected it was like this really deep feeling of like I need to be in this woman's connection, in her orbit.

Because that show was the way I would calm my nervous system. That show was the way I would check out in, in the best way.

KERRY: Yeah, in healthy ways. So we can check out in unhealthy ways and we can check out in healthy ways. Like chef's table.

GABBY: For me, it was my way. I gotta check out. And I remember lying down in the bed and just putting on my computer on my lap and tuning into you and just being like… [exhales]

So you've been helping me way before this book came out. Oh my God. And I love you so deeply, and I'm so fucking psyched to see what we can be in this world together as friends.

KERRY: We're just getting started.

GABBY: Yeah. And I'm so proud of you, and it's no question that this would be this bookended experience of me helping you in the beginning and then us coming to this conversation at the end.

KERRY: Oh my God. Truly, truly.

GABBY: My last question for you is what does it feel like now, because I've seen you blossoming into this authentic truth, authentic self. How different do you feel now than when we first had that conversation right before you started?

KERRY: So when you were talking about dissociation, I was thinking about the experience of losing my voice at the beginning of tour.

And it's so funny because one of the women on my team, Maggie, in those first couple days of the tour, it was like Ricola and throat coat and honey and all the things, all the like physical things to help me find my voice again.

And yesterday or the day before, I was like, I don't need that stuff. Like you actually can take the Ricola out of your bag.

That was just for this period where I couldn't have my voice. And I thought about that little girl that I write about in the book who is standing in that hallway and who calls for my mother. And when she says, yes, I get frozen. I can't speak my truth to her. I have no voice in that moment. And I muster up a lie about having a headache because I cannot voice my truth.

And I feel like that's what happened, right? That little girl went into a panic right before the tour started and was like, we can't, we can't, we can't, we cannot tell this truth. And you know, with your help, with other friends, with God, with some. just strength of the ancestors and angels and my own connection with my deepest truth and power.

I was able to move through her fear, bring her with me and say, I'm here now. I got this. You don't have to be in control anymore. You don't have to silence us. I'm gonna do this. I'm going to tell our truth. We're not going to get in trouble. He's not going to get in trouble. Everything's going to be okay because I'm a big girl now.

GABBY: That into that is the full blown expression of what it means to be self led. So in IFS, we've talked a bit about it, but self with a capital S, that leader within you. Taking her by the hand and saying, I can bring you with me. And letting her sit in the green room.

KERRY: Yes. Also, if you need to stay in the green room, you can do that.

Whatever you need. But, but I now have to show up in my highest self.

GABBY: That is your authentic self. Yeah. I am so proud of you, Kerry.

KERRY: Mm, thank you. I'm so, so grateful for your sisterhood and friendship and partnership and all of it.

GABBY: I love you.

KERRY: Love you.

GABBY: Everyone go buy the book.

KERRY: You can listen to it. I read it. It's good. The audiobook.

GABBY: Actually I've listened to it. I read it and I think that the audiobook is excellent 'cause then, you know, it's like people know your voice. Go listen to Thicker Than Water. I love you.

KERRY: Thank you. Love you.

If you made it to the end of this episode, that means you're truly committed to miracles. I'm really proud of you. If you wanna get more Gabby, tune in every Monday for a new episode.

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